1.
Liberia
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Liberia /laɪˈbɪəriə/, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to its west, Guinea to its north and it covers an area of 111,369 square kilometres and has a population of 4,503,000 people. English is the language and over 20 indigenous languages are spoken. The countrys capital and largest city is Monrovia, forests on the coastline are composed mostly of salt-tolerant mangrove trees, while the more sparsely populated inland has forests opening onto a plateau of drier grasslands. The climate is equatorial, with significant rainfall during the May–October rainy season, Liberia possesses about forty percent of the remaining Upper Guinean rainforest. It was an important producer of rubber in the early 20th century, the Republic of Liberia began as a settlement of the American Colonization Society, who believed African Americans would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the United States. The country declared its independence on July 26,1847, the U. S. did not recognize Liberias independence until during the American Civil War on February 5,1862. The African American settlers carried their culture with them to Liberia, Liberia maintained and kept its independence during the European colonial era. In addition, President William Tubman encouraged economic changes, internationally, Liberia was a founding member of the League of Nations, United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity. Five years of rule by the Peoples Redemption Council and five years of civilian rule by the National Democratic Party of Liberia were followed by the First. These resulted in the deaths and displacement of more than half a million people, a peace agreement in 2003 led to democratic elections in 2005. Recovery proceeds but about 85% of the population live below the poverty line. The Pepper Coast, also known as the Grain Coast, has been inhabited by peoples of Africa at least as far back as the 12th century. Mende-speaking people expanded westward from the Sudan, forcing many smaller ethnic groups southward toward the Atlantic Ocean, the Dei, Bassa, Kru, Gola and Kissi were some of the earliest documented peoples in the area. This influx was compounded by the decline of the Western Sudanic Mali Empire in 1375, additionally, as inland regions underwent desertification, inhabitants moved to the wetter coast. These new inhabitants brought skills such as spinning, cloth weaving, iron smelting, rice and sorghum cultivation. Shortly after the Mane conquered the region, the Vai people of the former Mali Empire immigrated into the Grand Cape Mount County region, the ethnic Kru opposed the influx of Vai, forming an alliance with the Mane to stop further influx of Vai. People along the coast built canoes and traded with other West Africans from Cap-Vert to the Gold Coast, arab traders entered the region from the north, and a long-established slave trade took captives to north and east Africa
2.
Central bank
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A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages a states currency, money supply, and interest rates. Central banks also usually oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries, Central banks in most developed nations are institutionally designed to be independent from political interference. Still, limited control by the executive and legislative bodies usually exists, prior to the 17th century most money was commodity money, typically gold or silver. However, promises to pay were widely circulated and accepted as value at least five hundred years earlier in both Europe and Asia. The Song dynasty was the first to issue generally circulating paper currency, in 1455, in an effort to control inflation, the succeeding Ming Dynasty ended the use of paper money and closed much of Chinese trade. The Bank of Amsterdam, established in the Dutch Republic in 1609, is considered to be the forerunner to modern central banks. The Wisselbanks innovations helped lay the foundations for the birth and development of the banking system that now plays a vital role in the worlds economy. Along with a number of local banks, it performed many functions of a central banking system. Lucien Gillard calls it the European guilder, and Adam Smith devotes many pages to explaining how the bank guilder works, the model of the Wisselbank as a state bank was adapted throughout Europe, including the Bank of Sweden and the Bank of England. Established by Dutch-Latvian Johan Palmstruch in 1668, Sveriges Riksbank is often considered by many as the worlds oldest central bank, the lenders would give the government cash and also issue notes against the government bonds, which could be lent again. A Royal Charter was granted on 27 July through the passage of the Tonnage Act 1694, the bank was given exclusive possession of the governments balances, and was the only limited-liability corporation allowed to issue banknotes. The £1. 2M was raised in 12 days, half of this was used to rebuild the Navy and these modern central banking functions evolved slowly through the 18th and 19th centuries. The currency crisis of 1797, caused by panicked depositors withdrawing from the Bank led to the government suspending convertibility of notes into specie payment. The bank was accused by the bullionists of causing the exchange rate to fall from over issuing banknotes. Nevertheless, it was clear that the Bank was being treated as an organ of the state, henry Thornton, a merchant banker and monetary theorist has been described as the father of the modern central bank. An opponent of the real bills doctrine, he was a defender of the bullionist position, thorntons process of monetary expansion anticipated the theories of Knut Wicksell regarding the cumulative process which restates the Quantity Theory in a theoretically coherent form. Until the mid-nineteenth century, commercial banks were able to issue their own banknotes, many consider the origins of the central bank to lie with the passage of the Bank Charter Act of 1844. Under this law, authorisation to issue new banknotes was restricted to the Bank of England, at the same time, the Bank of England was restricted to issue new banknotes only if they were 100% backed by gold or up to £14 million in government debt
3.
Dollar
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Dollar is the name of more than twenty currencies, including those of the United States, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Liberia, Jamaica and Namibia. Generally, one dollar is divided into one hundred cents, on 15 January 1520, the Czech Kingdom of Bohemia began minting coins from silver mined locally in Joachimsthal and marked on reverse with the Czech lion. The coins were called joachimsthaler, which became shortened in common usage to thaler or taler, the German name Joachimsthal literally means Joachims valley or Joachims dale. A later Dutch coin also depicting a lion was called the leeuwendaler or leeuwendaalder, the Dutch Republic produced these coins to accommodate its booming international trade. The leeuwendaler circulated throughout the Middle East and was imitated in several German and Italian cities and this coin was also popular in the Dutch East Indies and in the Dutch New Netherland Colony. It was in throughout the Thirteen Colonies during the 17th. The currencies of Romania and Bulgaria are, to this day, the modern American-English pronunciation of dollar is still remarkably close to the 17th century Dutch pronunciation of daler. Some well-worn examples circulating in the Colonies were known as dog dollars, Spanish pesos – having the same weight and shape – came to be known as Spanish dollars. By the time of the American Revolution, Spanish dollars gained significance because they backed paper money authorized by the individual colonies, common in the Thirteen Colonies, Spanish dollars were even legal tender in one colony, Virginia. On April 2,1792, U. S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton reported to Congress the precise amount of found in Spanish dollar coins in common use in the states. As a result, the United States dollar was defined as a unit of silver weighing 371 4/16th grains. It was specified that the money of account of the United States should be expressed in those same dollars or parts thereof, in an act passed in January 1837, the dollars alloy was set at 15%. Subsequent coins would contain the amount of pure silver as previously. On February 21,1853, the quantity of silver in the coins was reduced. However, the dollars constitutional meaning has remained unchanged through the years, silver was mostly removed from U. S. coinage by 1965 and the dollar became a free-floating fiat currency without a commodity backing defined in terms of real gold or silver. The US Mint continues to make silver $1-denomination coins, but these are not intended for general circulation, there are many quotes in the plays of William Shakespeare referring to dollars as money. This might be supported by a reference to the sum of ten dollars in Macbeth. In 1804, a British five-shilling piece, or crown, was sometimes called dollar and it was an overstruck Spanish eight real coin, the original of which was known as a Spanish dollar
4.
United States dollar
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The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its insular territories per the United States Constitution. It is divided into 100 smaller cent units, the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. The U. S. dollar was originally commodity money of silver as enacted by the Coinage Act of 1792 which determined the dollar to be 371 4/16 grain pure or 416 grain standard silver, the currency most used in international transactions, it is the worlds primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their currency, and in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while the country mints its own coins, or also accepts U. S. coins that can be used as payment in U. S. dollars. After Nixon shock of 1971, USD became fiat currency, Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power To coin money, laws implementing this power are currently codified at 31 U. S. C. Section 5112 prescribes the forms in which the United States dollars should be issued and these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as legal tender in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar, the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 also provides for the minting and issuance of other coins and these other coins are more fully described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the Statements are currently being expressed in U. S. dollars, the U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States. The word dollar is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution, there, dollars is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act, Section 20 of the act provided, That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units. And that all accounts in the offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation. In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States, unlike the Spanish milled dollar the U. S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the form is significantly more common
5.
Red
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Red is the color at the longer-wavelengths end of the spectrum of visible light next to orange, at the opposite end from violet. Red color has a predominant light wavelength of roughly 620–740 nanometers, light with a longer wavelength than red but shorter than terahertz radiation and microwave is called infrared. Red is one of the secondary colors, resulting from the combination of yellow. Traditionally, it was viewed as a primary colour, along with yellow and blue, in the RYB color space and traditional color wheel formerly used by painters. Reds can vary in shade from light pink to very dark maroon or burgundy. Red is the color of cyan. In nature, the red color of blood comes from hemoglobin, the red color of the Grand Canyon and other geological features is caused by hematite or red ochre, both forms of iron oxide. It also causes the red color of the planet Mars, the color of autumn leaves is caused by pigments called anthocyanins, which are produced towards the end of summer, when the green chlorophyll is no longer produced. One to two percent of the population has red hair, the color is produced by high levels of the reddish pigment pheomelanin. Since red is the color of blood, it has historically been associated with sacrifice, danger, modern surveys in the United States and Europe show red is also the color most commonly associated with heat, activity, passion, sexuality, anger, love and joy. In China, India and many other Asian countries it is the color of symbolizing happiness, since the 19th century, red has also been associated with socialism and communism. The word red is derived from the Old English rēad, the word can be further traced to the Proto-Germanic rauthaz and the Proto-Indo European root rewdʰ-. In Sanskrit, the word means red or blood. In the Akkadian language of Ancient Mesopotamia and in the modern Inuit language of Inuit, the words for colored in Latin and Spanish both also mean red. In Portuguese the word for red is vermelho, which comes from Latin vermiculus, in the Russian language, the word for red, Кра́сный, comes from the same old Slavic root as the words for beautiful—красивый and excellent—прекрасный. Thus Red Square in Moscow, named long before the Russian Revolution, in heraldry, the word gules is used for red. Red can vary in hue from orange-red to violet-red, and for each hue there is a variety of shades and tints. Red hematite powder was found scattered around the remains at a grave site in a Zhoukoudian cave complex near Beijing
6.
Rice
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Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima. As a cereal grain, it is the most widely consumed staple food for a part of the worlds human population. It is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize, wild rice, from which the crop was developed, may have its native range in Australia. Chinese legends attribute the domestication of rice to Shennong, the emperor of China. Genetic evidence has shown that rice originates from a single domestication 8, previously, archaeological evidence had suggested that rice was domesticated in the Yangtze River valley region in China. From East Asia, rice was spread to Southeast and South Asia, Rice was introduced to Europe through Western Asia, and to the Americas through European colonization. There are many varieties of rice and culinary preferences tend to vary regionally, in some areas such as the Far East or Spain, there is a preference for softer and stickier varieties. Rice, a monocot, is grown as an annual plant, although in tropical areas it can survive as a perennial. The rice plant can grow to 1–1.8 m tall, occasionally more depending on the variety and it has long, slender leaves 50–100 cm long and 2–2.5 cm broad. The small wind-pollinated flowers are produced in a branched arching to pendulous inflorescence 30–50 cm long, the edible seed is a grain 5–12 mm long and 2–3 mm thick. Rice cultivation is well-suited to countries and regions with low costs and high rainfall, as it is labor-intensive to cultivate. However, rice can be grown practically anywhere, even on a hill or mountain area with the use of water-controlling terrace systems. Although its parent species are native to Asia and certain parts of Africa, centuries of trade, the traditional method for cultivating rice is flooding the fields while, or after, setting the young seedlings. The name wild rice is used for species of the genera Zizania and Porteresia. The Greek word is the source of all European words, the origin of the Greek word is unclear. It is sometimes held to be from the Tamil word அரிசி, however, Krishnamurti disagrees with the notion that Old Tamil arici is the source of the Greek term, and proposes that it was borrowed from descendants of Proto-Dravidian *wariñci instead. The varieties of rice are typically classified as long-, medium-, the grains of long-grain rice tend to remain intact after cooking, medium-grain rice becomes more sticky. Medium-grain rice is used for dishes, for risotto in Italy
7.
Blue
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Blue is the colour between violet and green on the optical spectrum of visible light. Human eyes perceive blue when observing light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometres, which is between 4500 and 4950 ångströms. Blues with a frequency and thus a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet, while those with a lower frequency. Pure blue, in the middle, has a wavelength of 470 nanometers, in painting and traditional colour theory, blue is one of the three primary colours of pigments, along with red and yellow, which can be mixed to form a wide gamut of colours. Red and blue mixed together form violet, blue and yellow together form green, Blue is also a primary colour in the RGB colour model, used to create all the colours on the screen of a television or computer monitor. The clear sky and the sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the wavelengths are scattered more widely by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules. An optical effect called Tyndall scattering, similar to Rayleigh scattering, explains blue eyes, distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called atmospheric perspective. Blue has been used for art and decoration since ancient times and it is the most important color in Judaism. In the Middle Ages, cobalt blue was used to colour the stained glass windows of cathedrals, beginning in the 9th century, Chinese artists used cobalt to make fine blue and white porcelain. Blue dyes for clothing were made from woad in Europe and indigo in Asia, in 1828 a synthetic ultramarine pigment was developed, and synthetic blue dyes and pigments gradually replaced mineral pigments and vegetable dyes. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh and other late 19th century painters used ultramarine and cobalt blue not just to depict nature, in the late 18th century and 19th century, blue became a popular colour for military uniforms and police uniforms. In the 20th century, because blue was associated with harmony, it was chosen as the colour of the flags of the United Nations. Surveys in the US and Europe show that blue is the colour most commonly associated with harmony, faithfulness, confidence, distance, infinity, the imagination, cold, and sometimes with sadness. In US and European public opinion polls it is the most popular colour, Blue is the colour of light between violet and green on the visible spectrum. Blues also vary in shade or tint, darker shades of blue contain black or grey, darker shades of blue include ultramarine, cobalt blue, navy blue, and Prussian blue, while lighter tints include sky blue, azure, and Egyptian blue. Today most blue pigments and dyes are made by a chemical process, the modern English word blue comes from Middle English bleu or blewe, from the Old French bleu, a word of Germanic origin, related to the Old High German word blao. In heraldry, the azure is used for blue
8.
Brown
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In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is made by combining red, black, and yellow, or red, yellow, and blue. In the RGB color model used to project colors onto television screens and computer monitors, brown is made by combining red and green, the brown color is seen widely in nature, in wood, soil, human hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation. Brown is the color of wood or rich soil. According to public opinion surveys in Europe and the United States, brown is the least favorite color of the public, the color most often associated with plainness, the rustic, the term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color. The first recorded use of brown as a name in English was in 1000. The Common Germanic adjective *brûnoz, *brûnâ meant both dark colors and a glistening or shining quality, whence burnish, the current meaning developed in Middle English from the 14th century. In Southeast Asia, the name often comes from chocolate, coklat in Malay. In Japan, the word means the color of tea. Brown has been used in art since prehistoric times, paintings using umber, a natural clay pigment composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide, have been dated to 40,000 BC. Paintings of brown horses and other animals have found on the walls of the Lascaux cave dating back about 17,300 years. The female figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings have brown skin, light tan was often used on painted Greek amphorae and vases, either as a background for black figures, or the reverse. The Ancient Greeks and Romans produced a fine reddish-brown ink, of a color called sepia and this ink was used by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and other artists during the Renaissance, and by artists up until the present time. In Ancient Rome, brown clothing was associated with the classes or barbarians. The term for the plebeians, or urban poor, was pullati, in the Middle Ages brown robes were worn by monks of the Franciscan order, as a sign of their humility and poverty. Each social class was expected to wear a color suitable to their station, russet was a coarse homespun cloth made of wool and dyed with woad and madder to give it a subdued grey or brown shade. By the statute of 1363, poor English people were required to wear russet, the medieval poem Piers Plowman describes the virtuous Christian, And is gladde of a goune of a graye russet As of a tunicle of Tarse or of trye scarlet. The umbers were not widely used in Europe before the end of the fifteenth century, artists began using far greater use of browns when oil painting arrived in the late fifteenth century. In Northern Europe, Jan van Eyck featured rich earth browns in his portraits to set off the brighter colors, the 17th and 18th century saw the greatest use of brown
9.
Scooter (motorcycle)
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A scooter or motor scooter is a motorcycle with step-through frame and a platform for the riders feet. Elements of scooter design have been present in some of the earliest motorcycles, Scooter development continued in Europe and the United States between the World Wars. The global popularity of scooters dates from the post-World War II introductions of the Vespa and these scooters were intended to provide low-power personal transportation. The original layout is widely used in this application. Maxi-scooters, with engines from 250 to 850 cc have been developed for Western markets, scooters are popular for personal transport, partly due to being cheap to buy, easy to operate and convenient to park and store. Licensing requirements for scooters are easier and cheaper than for cars in most parts of the world, a motor scooter is a motorcycle similar to a kick scooter with a seat, a floorboard, and small or low wheels. The United States Department of Transportation defines a scooter as a motorcycle that has a platform for the feet or has integrated footrests. The classic scooter design features a frame and a flat floorboard for the riders feet. This design is possible because most scooter engines and drive systems are attached to the axle or under the seat. Scooters usually feature bodywork, including a front leg shield and body that conceals all or most of the mechanicals, there is often some integral storage space, either under the seat, built into the front leg shield, or both. Scooters have varying engine displacements and configurations ranging from 50 cc single-cylinder to 850 cc twin-cylinder models, some scooters carry a spare wheel. Many recent scooters use conventional front forks with the front axle fastened at both ends, most jurisdictions do not differentiate between scooters and motorcycles. For all legal purposes in the United States of America, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recommends using the motorcycle for all of these vehicles. However, while NHTSA excludes the term motor scooter from legal definition, it proceeds, in the same document, the emissions of mopeds and scooters have been the subject of multiple studies. In the same study, four-stroke mopeds, with and without catalytic converters, approximate parity with automobiles was achieved with NOx emissions in these studies. Emissions performance was tested on a basis and was unaffected by fuel economy. Scooter-like traits began to develop in motorcycle designs around the 1900s, in 1894, Hildebrand & Wolfmüller produced the first motorcycle that was available for purchase. Their motorcycle had a frame, with its fuel tank mounted on the down tube, its parallel two-cylinder engine mounted low on the frame
10.
Purple
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Purple is a color intermediate between blue and red. It is similar to violet, but unlike violet, which is a color with its own wavelength on the visible spectrum of light, purple is a composite color made by combining red. According to surveys In Europe and the U. S. purple is the color most often associated with royalty, magic, mystery, when combined with pink, it is associated with eroticism, femininity and seduction. Purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates, it became the color worn by the rulers of the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire. Similarly in Japan, the color is associated with the Emperor. The complementary color of purple is yellow, the first recorded use of the word purple in the English language was in the year 975 AD. In heraldry, the word purpure is used for purple, in the traditional color wheel used by painters, violet and purple are both placed between red and blue. Purple occupies the space closer to red, between crimson and violet, violet is closer to blue, and is usually less saturated than purple. While the two look similar, from the point of view of optics there are important differences. There is no such thing as the wavelength of purple light, monochromatic violet light cannot be produced by the red-green-blue color system, the method used to create colors on a television screen or computer display. This means that when light strikes the eye, the S-cone should be stimulated strongly. The resulting color has the same hue as pure violet, however, one curious psychophysical difference between purple and violet is their appearance with an increase in luminance. Violet, as it brightens, looks more and more blue, the same effect does not happen with purple. This is the result of what is known as the Bezold–Brücke shift, while the scientific definitions of violet and purple are clear, the cultural definitions are more varied. The color known in antiquity as Tyrian purple ranged from crimson to a deep bluish-purple, in France, purple is defined as a dark red, inclined toward violet. The color called purple by the French, pourpre, contains red and half the amount of blue of the color called purple in the United States. In German, this color is sometimes called Purpurrot to avoid confusion, Purple first appeared in prehistoric art during the Neolithic era. These works have been dated to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC, as early as the 15th century BC the citizens of Sidon and Tyre, two cities on the coast of Ancient Phoenicia, were producing purple dye from a sea snail called the spiny dye-murex
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